There was so much riding on that debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But the actual event turned out to be so underwhelming there is now a clamor for the Democratic Party to call for an open convention and choose a new person to vie for the presidency.
It was that bad.
The Biden team desperately wanted this debate to happen. This was an event, they thought, that would provide Biden’s reelection campaign the momentum it needed at precisely this time. All the polls show the two candidates in a statistical tie, with Trump enjoying a slight edge in several battleground states.
Biden advisers thought a debate will reveal their candidate to be immensely more competent than his rival. They thought Trump would simply melt down under the pressure of a policy tit-for-tat.
They thought wrong.
Biden, said to be suffering from a cold, looked feeble and incoherent. He stuttered at instances and missed several opportunities to land telling blows on Trump.
Trump, by contrast, was the showman he has always been. He was loud as ever, dominating a medium where energetic performance matters most. He made no new point, however, peddling the old lies he had dished out.
One commentator wryly thought that this presidential debate should have been titled The Old Man versus the Con Man. If it was, both candidates would have lived up to the billing.
More seriously, however, this debate was between one who cannot govern and the other who should not be allowed to govern. The former was clearly too feeble to save America. The latter would destroy America.
Biden needed to clearly win this debate. He took several days off, closeted himself at his Camp David retreat to prepare for the event. He was the more disciplined man and the one most conversant on the issues of the day. Everyone expected him do dominate Trump in a format that focused on policy options.
He did not accomplish that mission.
Trump had the advantage of having a lower bar to surmount. All he had to do was avoid making a major gaffe or collapsing onstage. The tight controls imposed by CNN over the microphones and the allotted speaking times saved Trump from all his destructive impulses. He could not loom menacingly behind his opponent like he did with Hillary Clinton or incessantly interrupt his opponent like he did with Biden four years ago.
There were no electronic controls for fact checking either candidate in real time, however. Trump dished out lies and reinvented narratives. He ignored questions he had no ready answers for by focusing on personal attacks against the incumbent.
Perhaps the Biden team should not have been too enthusiastic for a debate. The historical record of US electoral politics shows that incumbents consistently lose debates like this one – simply because they had records to defend against attacks by challengers.
But this is water under the bridge. The debate has happened and Biden so remarkably underperformed. In the immediate post-debate polls, confidence in Biden’s ability to lead his nation fell back even further.
This is what this debate accomplished. It convinced even staunch Biden partisans that their leader might not have what it takes to lead.
This is a desperate moment for the Democratic Party.
Democrats thought they could ride the wave of outrage over restrictions on reproductive rights imposed by conservative justices and Republicans. That is not happening, however. Their nominee is sinking under the weight of perception he is too old to provide the leadership America needs at this time.
The US is facing challenges on many fronts. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza drain US capacity to maintain the peace. The economy might seem vibrant at the moment but it does not seem capable of keeping pace with the dynamic economies of the world. America’s aging infrastructure, its deeply polarized politics and the apparent absence of an emerging generation of visionary leaders hampers its ability to thrive long into the future.
No loyal Democrat will want to challenge the party’s choice of nominee. Every possible alternative to the Biden nomination has demurred. The only way the Democratic Party can move out of the present predicament with Biden is if the nominee himself volunteers to withdraw. That makes possible an open convention this August where delegates may consider all options freely.
This will be unprecedented to be sure. It will also be a big gamble. Any new nominee will have to start from scratch with only a few weeks before the November vote. A move like this will require an incredible amount of audacity on the part of the Democratic Party – the same sort of audacity demonstrated by Emmanuel Macron when he called for snap elections hours after his party lost to the hard right in European parliamentary elections.
But a younger and more eloquent candidate will break the inertia of this contest. The Trump campaign has focused on Biden’s age and made it a great political liability while playing down evidence of dementia on the part of the Republican nominee.
Voters will be relieved by the quick change in political narratives away from Biden’s incoherence and Trump’s constant lying. The two aging candidates have defined what should quickly be evident as a sterile policy agenda. That grip needs to be broken.
American politics badly needs to be refreshed.